A look at SAP GUI themes

Did you know you can change the way SAP GUI looks? You know, that basic SAP tool most of us use for hours each day? I really don’t like the looks of the standard theme, but you can easily change it into something else. I’m not sure if people know about this. All I see around me are those awful colors and/or 3D buttons (sometimes even with animations) like we are back in 2001 again.

In this post we will look at how to change your SAP GUI theme (which is very easy) and have a look at the different themes that are available.

To change the theme you have to go to the Options menu in SAP GUI. This is the most outer right button. You can also use the shortcut ALT+F12. Select Options here.

Here you can choose the theme from the dropdown box. You need to restart SAP GUI before the changes take effect.

Some themes, unfortunately only the older ones, have the option to use a different color set for each SAP system. This is very handy if you have to work with multiple systems at once. You can use for example a grey set for development, red for test and blue for production. Or you different colors for BW and ECC systems. All themes except for Corbu and Crystal Blue have this option.

So now let’s have a look at the various themes that are available for us with their “description”. I’ll start with the oldest theme first.

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SAP BI TechEd 2014 recap video

Why waste your precious time and thousands of euros on going to the SAP TechEd event if you can get just watch a video covering all the key subjects for SAP BI?

Sven and Ronald did a quick 45 minutes SAP BI TechEd 2014 recap in Google Hangout last week. No marketing slides and no old or basic stuff we normally have to sit through each SAP presentation. Fast and very to the point. Good stuff guys!

So this is must see TV if you care about what’s happening in the the world of SAP BI and if you didn’t visit TechEd or SitNL yourself this year. Check it out in the video below or use the podcast stream for on the road listening/watching. Slides are here.

Edit: Sorry forgot to mention: The video is all Dutch… (maybe somebody can write the subtitles?)

The SAP Big Data Bus is coming to your town!

It’s now over 48 hours ago that we had the #AllAccessAnalytics webinar, and I’m still heavily fascinated by this Big Data Bus thing that was announced during the webinar. There are 60.000 SAP BI customers world-wide, and SAP is driving a bus (!!!) from town to town to showcase its lightning fast products. Oh man…

Over 30 minutes in this webinar and the new thing until now is a big fn data bus… pic.twitter.com/alKhI9jrgN

— Xavier Hacking (@xjhacking) August 14, 2013

SAP Press finally goes e-reader!

As of this month SAP Press offers its books not only in paper and from its online library, but also in downloadable formats PDF, ePUB and Mobi.

I’ve read (and reviewed) a lot of the SAP Press books on SAP BI and most of them are really really good and worth the money because they save me a lot of time. I always make sure I also get the online version of the book too, so I have all the information accessible all the time to look up things when I’m on the job.

The online library feature is nice, but you always need an active internet connection and you can’t scroll through the books as fast as in a PDF-file on your local machine. So I’m glad they finally offer this most-wanted feature.

We are pleased to announce that more than 25 of our newest releases and most popular titles are available right now in multiple download formats. Going forward, ALL newly published titles will have e-book download formats available (in addition to print and online formats) upon publication.

SAP Press now offers the following digital formats:

PDF to run on Macs/PCs, desktops/laptops, iPhones/iPads and a multitude of other devices.
ePUB for tablets, mobile devices or eReader.
Mobi files can be read on any Kindle device.
The already available Online Library to be used within an Internet browser like Chrome or Safari.

These files are DRM free so you can use them really on any device. The only limitation is that you can only download each format 5 times and the file will have a digital watermark.

They eventually will also provide e-book version of older titles. If you haven’t ‘upgraded’ your print book to an online/e-book version you should hurry; next month they will kill this $10/20-upgrade option. I have no idea why.

Please note, codes printed inside books and free trials that have not been activated or upgraded will ALL expire after December 7, 2012. You must activate and/or upgrade by this date. Any unused codes or expired trials can no longer be utilized under any circumstances after December 7, 2012.

Check it at SAP-Press.com.

SAP Logon hack: Make logging on to SAP easier and faster

I have to logon to a lot of SAP systems each day: SAP BW DAP (Development, Accept, Production), SAP ECC DAP, SAP Solution Manager, sometimes SAP PI DAP, SAP BusinessObjects BI4 Launchpad DAP, SAP BusinessObjects BI4 CMC DAP. Pffff. Each system asks for a username and a password that has to be changed every month or so. Who can remember all these passwords?

Now there is a way to improve this. I found this great blog by Peter Lagner which absolutely must be shared! The blog explains how you can use the application KeePass to store your SAP Logon credentials and to logon to your SAP system without having to remember and type in your username and password every time.

It is very easy to set up. Check Peter’s blog for the details, screenshots and video. In short:

1. Download KeePass here (get the package version if you’re not allowed to install software on your computer).
2. Create a new KeePass database with a master password.
3. Add a new entry.
4. Fill in a title (use the SAP system name), your username and password.
5. In the URL box enter the following: cmd://sapshcut -system=BWA -client=100 -user={USERNAME} -pw={PASSWORD} Change BWA into your SAP system name and change 100 into the right client.
6. Select the entry and use the CTRL+U shortcut to open the ‘url’ and logon to the SAP system. You can also double-click on the url.
7. To logon to the web-based SAP BusinessObjects BI4 environments go to the url and use CTRL+ALT+A to let KeePass fill in the username and password.

This is a big improvement over logging in manually each time. The only thing that I’m missing right now is a way to assign a system/url to a specific system-wide usable hotkey. Now I still have to go to KeyPass and select a system, but I’d rather eliminate that step by using a shortcut. So if you know how to do this; please share and pick up some karma!